“I left my jumper behind. My grey one. Up at the cemetery. Right near the tree.”

“Oh, Trig. It’s boiling. Why d’you bring a jumper out anyway? It’s been boiling for weeks.”

“Sorry.” Trig stuck his hands into his pockets. His head dropped down between his shoulders. “I’ll go and get it.”

Mr Wetheral’s Siamese cat skulked past with a dead frog hanging out of its mouth.

“S’all right, Trig,” I said. “You go home. I’ll get the jumper. I’ll be quicker.”

He chucked his arms round me and squeezed. A proper Trig-hug.

The jumper wasn’t there.

I went round the tree. I went round William Whittington and Georgina Millicent Cruise. I went round the whole blooming graveyard. It wasn’t there.

Maybe he’d got mixed up. Maybe he’d left it somewhere else. Typical Trig.

Just one last look behind the gravestones again.

“Hey!”

What was that?

“Hey!”

It wasn’t a shout. More of a really loud whisper.

“Hey!”

Yes. A loud whisper. Like whoever was saying it half wanted to be heard and half didn’t.

“Here! Over here!”

It was coming from the hawthorn hedge. The boundary.

Hedges don’t whisper on their own. Hedges don’t whisper unless someone’s hiding on the other side of them.

A head peeped out through the thinnest part of the greenery. A girl’s head. With hair the exact same yellow as a pound-cake mixture right before you bake it.

I knew all the kids in our town. Been at school with them since I was knee-high. None of us had hair that colour. And none of us would hide on the wrong side of a town boundary. Not ever.

She was a wanderer.

My heart paused.

My breath stopped.

Dirty. Dangerous. Deceitful.

“You looking for something?” She squeezed through the hedge and stood up all foal-like on long, skinny legs.

She was wearing a raggedy brown dress, a pair of wellies that might have been red once, and Trig’s grey jumper.

CHAPTER 4

The girl grinned. There was a big gap between her two front teeth.

“Is she all right?” She tucked her pound-cake hair behind her ears. It fell straight back out again. “The one who fell out of the tree. Is she all right?”

She’d been watching us. All the time we were there.

“It’s just you here now, isn’t it? The others are gone?” she said.

I looked back towards the town. Too far away to see anyone. Too far away for anyone to hear a shout for help.

“You looking for this?” She pulled the front of the jumper away from her chest.

Mum’d go mad if we lost Trig’s jumper. He’d only got two.

“I’m Una. Una Opal.” She stuck out her hand.

I stepped backwards.

“You can have your jumper,” she said. “I’ll give it to you.”